In American history, one
Congressman was re-elected from jail

Nature has left this tincture in the blood, 

that all men would be tyrants if they could;    

if they forbear their neighbors to devour, 

tis not for want of will,

 but want of power.-  

-De-Foe. Jure Divino.

Have enough money? All that power to your head? 

You've got no idea what your up against.

It must be cold in your ivory tower, where no-one ever told the truth,

far below in the rising water, no-one gives a damn for you.

Attack the immigrants, cause they don't look like us?

They don't know my God? What have we become?

It must be cold in your ivory tower, where no-one ever told the truth,

far below in the rising water, no-one gives a damn for you.

So lets get one thing straight, what makes our country great is our diversity

I hope you learn to see

It must be cold in your ivory tower, where no-one ever told the truth,

far below in the rising water, no-one gives a damn for you.

Born in county Wicklow, Ireland 1750, Matthew Lyon emigrated to the New World a teenage orphan and was sold into indentured servitude in CT. After working and bartering for his freedom, Lyon moved to the ‘Hampshire Grants' with Ethan Allen & Mary Hosford.  ​​Enlisting as a Private, he served in all the major local Revolutionary War battles including Ticonderoga, Montgomery’s army and Saratoga. Through the course of his honorable service he was promoted to Adjunct Paymaster to General Seth Warner.

Founder of Fairhaven Vermont, publisher of the Scourge of Aristocracy, Congressman Matthew Lyon was imprisoned for violating the Alien Sedition act; which had given the President unconstitutional authority to expel or refuse immigrants and imprison those who published against the administration. Lyon won re-election, by a 2 to 1 margin, while serving a four month jail sentence in Vergennes Vermont. 

Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Mason, Apollo Austin,  the Green Mountain Boys, and the citizens in town ALL tried to pay his $1060.96 bail but Lyon and his 2nd wife Beulah refused the money.

 The ‘Lyon of Vermont’ effectively ended the Federalist Party when casting the tie-breaking vote for President Jefferson during the election of 1800, which had gone to the Congress after the electoral college failed.